This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 112 words of the full text and any section headings.

The performance characteristics of latex agglutination tests are highly dependent on the manufacturer. Although Kutinsky et al¹ are aware of this fact, they extrapolate the poor performance of the latex agglutination test used in their study to all latex agglutination tests for D-dimer levels. In fact, many latex agglutination tests have sensitivities and negative predictive values, ranging between 94% and 100%, that match or exceed those of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays.^2-3 The recommendation by the authors that latex agglutination tests not be used to evaluate patients with suspected pulmonary embolism is based on insufficient data. The Yugo was a lemon, but not all cars are poorly engineered.

Paul Fiedler, MD
New Haven, Conn

1. Kutinsky I, Blakley S, Roche V. Normal D-dimer levels in patients with pulmonary embolism. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:1569-1572. FREE FULL TEXT 2. Duet M, Benelhadj S, Kedra W, Vilain D, et al. A new quantitative D-dimer assay appropriate in emergencies: reliability of the assay for pulmonary embolism exclusion diagnosis. Thromb Res. 1998;91:1-5. FULL TEXT | WEB OF SCIENCE | PUBMED 3. Heit JA, Miner TA, Andrew JC, Larson DR, Li H, Nichols WL. Determinants of plasma fibrin D-dimer sensitivity for acute pulmonary embolism as defined by pulmonary angiography. Arch Pathol Lab Med. 1999;123:235-240. WEB OF SCIENCE | PUBMED

Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2485.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?